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Caltech Pranks MIT's Prefrosh Weekend
doughnuthole writes "Caltech students ventured to Massachusetts this past Wednesday to unleash a series of pranks at MIT's prefrosh weekend. They distributed shirts with MIT on the front and '...because not everyone can go to Caltech' on the back. They placed inflatable palm trees in the infamous Tomb of the Unknown Tool and around the great dome and floated Caltech balloons in building seven. A banner transformed Massachusetts Institute of Technology into That Other Institute of Technology. Saturday night a LASER spelling the letters C-A-L-T-E-C-H was directed at the top of the Green building. A full account of the pranks is located at www.caltechvsmit.com."
Being that caltech is so much better than MIT you would think that they could find a good spell checker...
Who's Caltech, by the way?
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The following email went out on the MIT hacking mailing list:
>Someone apparently released a number of balloons in lobby 7 with
>CalTech written on them. There is also a much larger Mylar Balloon
>with C.I.T. My initial reaction, and the reaction of most people I
>talked to was "C.I.T, what's that?"
>
>Several suggestions were made on what to do about this since if we do
>nothing the balloons will float mockingly over lobby 7 for days:
>
>-Remove the balloons tonight (might be able to get a number of them
>with a needle on a stick from the intersticial space).
>
>-release a second large mylar balloon that says "SUCKS"
>
>-Hack Caltech.
>
>one friend I talked to commented that she was friends with the moles,
>the "legitamate" hackers at CalTech, and they claim to have no
>knowledge of this and are busy with some other project. It would be
>good if we could find out who did this. Could it have been an overzealous prefrosh?
>
>
>As I said my initial reaction was "what is C.I.T? I have drafted an
>article that I hope to send to the Tech Newspaper. Offering an
>alternate explanation.
>Comments, and suggestions are highly encouraged as this is a first draft.
>
>Amilio
>amilio@alum.mit.edu
>
>
>
>>>proposed tech article follows below>>
>
>
>C.I.T Looses BALLoonS
>
>The Center for Incompetent Technologies lost all of their display props
>on the way to the activities midway today. Representatives from the
>research group lost numerous small balloons and a larger one bearing
>the group's acronym while crossing lobby 7, "We thought slip knots
>would hold," said Ben Bitdiddle director of C.I.T.
>
>The Center for Incompetent Technologies is a newly formed nationwide
>research group interested in developing ineffective, arcane, and
>generally useless technologies. "So many companies and institutes are
>focused on doing 'good research' and developing 'useful technologies'"
>said Mr. Bitdiddle accenting his comments with air quotes, "we decided
>there was an untapped niche market for useless technologies." The
>group's motto is taken from an episode of The Simpsons: "Aim so low
>that even if you succeed, no one will care"
>
>The smaller balloons were apparently leftover from numerous C.I.T
>events at Caltech. The balloons were custom printed for the school
>where the group is apparently very popular. Many of the poorly made
>balloons have already popped and are littering the floor of lobby 7.
>"We probably should have had some new customized balloons made, but if
>we wanted to do things well, we wouldn't be CIT."
>
>The lost balloons were originally mistaken for a hack, but
>representatives for the hacking community quickly corrected the error,
>commenting "No, that was just a screw up, hacks are generally more
>interesting and creative," Jack Florey.
>
>>>>>
>
This is news for nerds. If we don't keep up with the MIT / Cal Tech rivalry, who will??
While I tend to understand the enthusiasm that each of these groups of students have towards their alma mater, I have to wonder if the Caltech kids are as smart as they think they are.
I'd much rather stay in warm CA during April than go to MA. Invite the MIT whiz kids down and haze them in the relative comfort of your own hometown. For chrissakes, what fun is it to freeze your ass off over there?
Of course you know this means war.
College students conduct prank - film at 11!
Seriously, why should I care about this? I mean, it's about nerds and all that, but... how is it "news for nerds"?
See, the problem with this is, MIT has a reputation (deserved or not) as being better than Caltech. Caltech can do this to MIT, and people go "Hah hah, how clever." But, if MIT were to do this to Caltech, people would say "What stupid arrogant assholes, why don't they stay in Cambridge and stop bragging about their superiority at other schools."
This space intentionally left blank.
This is "Slashdot" news, you know news for nerds.
The topic is MIT and Caltech, not much nerdier than that!
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This is the sort of stuff that I like - good natured, harmless pranks. Reminds me of the various MIT hacks that I read about many years ago (something involving a VW bug if I recall....).
Well if we want to rehash old rivalries, we could bring vi vs. emacs in, or one of the numerous others that has been flogged to death over the years. However, its not like we'll get to see emacs running around with a VI t-shirt, so I guess the *IT rivalry is more entertaining.
You're still new around here?
They don't have girls at Caltech. (T-shirt picture.)
...that is some serious dedication. However, I was under the impression that Caltech had a rival on the West Coast, namely Harvey Mudd, right?
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
In response, MIT slashdotted a server carrying accounts of the pranks.
destroying CalTech's web servers...
So what's the origin of the word "frosh?" That's one of the dumbest-sounding words in the English vocabulary. Frosh. Sounds like a refrigerator malfunction. Why not just say freshmen? That at least makes a modicum of sense.
Looks like they slashdotted http://caltechvsmit.com
Mmmm.. Donuts
All your servers are belong to us!!!
:(
24 comments and the site is down
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Caltech may have pranked MIT's prefrosh weekend, but MIT got the last laugh by having their puppet doughnuthole submit the story to Slashdot. Caltech is a small (no, tiny) campus, and that one server fire could take the entire place out by morning.
So... anyone want to comment on why the web (caltechvsmit.com)page is down? You REALLY ought to secure your server when you're bragging.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
We suspect that someone posted the URL to /.
Oh. Shit.
If I were Caltech, I'd watch my back.
So that's why my friend came back saying that he didn't want to go to MIT...
Apu graduated high in his class at Caltech. That is, Calcutta Technical Institute.
They've posted a whole bunch of links to Caltech sites on slashdot. Bwahahahaha!
Flood that website! haha
The laser message also included an arrow, which I can only assume the Caltech students meant to point west toward their own campus. Instead, they incompetently aimed the arrow to the east, directing anyone who wants to visit as a result of this hack straight into the Atlantic -- and if anyone does follow it, well, it serves them right.
MIT pranks tend to be so much more artful than the ones listed here. Caltech has yet to transform an MIT building into a cathedral or cause the president's office to disappear entirely.
I'm unimpressed by Caltech if they can't pull pranks that are better than the pranks MIT pulls on itself.
that's not funny. what WOULD be funny would be to see a Caltech student fight a M.I.T. student. I would pay to watch that.
RTFF
Newsflash: Dorkwads Prank Dickwads in Famous Wad Rivalry!
It was DoS attacked it before it was /.ed.
If it was insecure why didn't MIT just deface it and then brag about it by changing the score and leaving a noten like the rules say to do?
This is definitely a one-sided rivalry. MIT really doesn't care about Caltech, but Caltech really cares about MIT. MIT has it's own one-sided rivalry with Harvard, but believe me, most MIT people just don't give two shits about Caltech. (I was an undergrad at MIT, but spent over a year working at Caltech. I know both cultures.)
No you dolt, it's the nerd Super Bowl. Soon we will have collegiate teams of geeks that contest with each other in great fashion like the other college sports..betting on such, making regional trees, ranks, etc :p
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
Travel 4k+ miles to put balloons up and put on a laser show? When I was in college all we ever did was get drunk and have sex, I am glad I never turned in my app to CalTech.
Best theoretical college in physics and engineering. Best. In the world. Period.
OK, so does it have a big sticker on the front doors? Really, have we learned nothing lately?
Hey spammer, grab a free shut the fuck up.
I wish I had mod points. Take a look at the last few stories. This guy's just been copy/pasting stuff to get his FREE CRAP links up.
A bunch of Yalies pulled a similar prank at this year's The Game, but there was no lock-picking or theft involved - just pure social engineering. They reconnoitered the Cantabs' stadium and designed their own card stunt. The day of the game, they dressed up as the "Harvard Pep Squad", and passed out their cards, without, apparently, raising an eyebrow. And not once, not twice, but three times (or more!), they got 1800 Havard students and alums to declare as one: "WE SUCK".
In their own words, or as told by the Yale Daily 'News'.
Apparently they don't cover how to keep your webserver running at Caltech.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Say what you want, but pranks and happenings such as these really spice up the students days and I love reading about them. We used to do similar pranks when I was studying, several made it to the news. Our favourites included installing elevator music in the elevators, bashing the Faculty of Engineering Science and Technology students (we were electronics) and their train (they had one train, we had one on tracks that actually works). One night we made two "full size" garden gnomes out of paper mache and placed them on two readily available points. We made the news in several newspapers for that. See the pics here http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2004/06/24/401413.h tml?i=1 16 pictures total.
In the first phase of my undergraduate career (long story), I was at Purdue, a place famous for engineers and infamous for its mind-numbing, unspeakable conservativism. We didn't get many pranks, but one of the better ones was the time someone erected three outhouses outside of the Math building: one for Men, one for Women, and one for UNIX. Sadly, they were torn down only a bit later. Steve Beering had no sense of humor.
Also, nearly immediately after the banner was placed that read:
"That Other" Institute of Technology
"That Other" was changed to "The Only" by the M.I.T. kids.
Just as soon as you get a login or use your real name :)
Compared to MIT's history of frankly, wicked cool Hacks (What the students and faculty at the nerdiest of the nerd schools call prectical jokes) this one is pretty lame. Topical, but lame. See the MIT Campus Police Car Hack for one of the better ones performed by MIT. I'm still partial to the Harvard/Yale/MIT football game though.
And it looks like that is the film where they got their prank ideas from, the laser lights. Too bad they did not have the frozen ice that turns directly to gas... maybe... or kaboom. I couldn't finish the equations last night so I don't know how volatile it is.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I thought it would be safe to come back to Slashdot after April 1 was over. Guess not.
Would anyone at MIT have entertained, even just for a moment, traveling to California to do something similar to the California Institute of Technology? I doubt it.
Not to say that Caltech isn't one of the top engineering schools in the country: of course it is. But it doesn't enjoy MIT's prestige, and these pranks just go to enlarge that prestige.
The undergraduates used to award a nice-looking trophy with a large aluminum left-handed screw to that professor that best exhibited the kind of callous attitude that makes getting through MIT more difficult than it needs to be.
You know, like scheduling a 4 hour final exam at an inconvenient time, etc; the kinds of things that drove the sale of the IHTFP T-shirts.
There wouldn't be such a list on the web, would there?
you'll hopefully have all heard of http://www.harvardsucks.org/. I bet their video will be slashdotted before morning though...
Caltech students once changed famous Hollywood sign to this:
Caltech
For those interested in the whole MIT/Caltech hack/prank scene, this is an excerpt of a review I did some years ago of books from The MIT Press, the Caltech Alumni Association and St. Martin's Press.
First up, Legends of Caltech and More Legends of Caltech. These two 80 page volumes chronicle technopranking at Caltech from the 1920s to the late 1980s. Learn about the classic Rose Bowl card section prank that was broadcast live on NBC, See the HOLLYWOOD sign become the CALTECH sign before your very eyes. Vicariously enjoy the revenge of Caltech students upon a greedy police department.
These books MUST be ordered from the Caltech bookstore, as they are privately published by the Caltech Alumni Association. Ordering info is at the bottom of this page.
Ah, but what of MIT? For their history we must turn to a pair of books.
The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT. Published by the MIT Museum, this is a 158 page book with lots of photos and text concerning the hacks pulled by MIT men and women over the decades. See The Great Breast of Knowledge, The Great Pumpkin, the legendary Smoot Marks on the Harvard Bridge. Read about the chronic humiliation suffered by the inmates at Harvard as MIT has its way with the statue of John Harvard and the Harvard Stadium.
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore. 165 pages of legends, essays, photographs and stories of and about hacking at MIT. This book, published in 1996, continues where the Journal leaves off. The MIT Campus Police car on the Great Dome, arguably one the greatest hacks in MIT history, graces the cover and several inside pages. Regrettably, only black and white photographs are used in the body of the book, as there are several hacks, most notably, the Cathedral of Our Lady of The All Night Tool (The "stained glass" panels in Lobby 7) that really should be seen in full color. That minor gripe aside, this is a fine companion volume to The Journal and shares the same binding dimensions as The Journal, making them a handsome pair of books to grace the shelves of any creative malcontent. (The title refers to the canonical reply to an MIT Campus cop when one is discovered in a spectacularly inappropriate location, such as the apex of the Great Dome at 4:00AM.)
Our final book is published by St. Martin's Press and should still be available via any bookstore that will special order books for its customers.
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks, is a 240 page history of collegiate pranking in America, beginning with the earliest colleges in America, and even taking note of some hijinx taking place in Canada.
This is an excellent companion volume to the preceeding four books, as it covers collegiate pranking in general, as well as detailing some events that are NOT covered in either the Caltech or MIT books.
If I were sending a son or daughter off to college, I would certainly include all five of these books in their "books to bring to school" box. Start 'em off right!
I have all five books and have enjoyed reading and re-reading them. I trust that these will be inspirational to all who enjoy a good hack and tweaking the nose of Authority, be it the State or the School.
Ordering information
Legends of Caltech is $9.00
More Legends of Caltech is $15.00
The mailing address of the Caltech Bookstore is:
Caltech Bookstore Mail Code 1-51 San Pasqual Street Pasadena CA 91125
The website for the Caltech Bookstore looks like you might be able to order these online.
The toll-free number for the Caltech bookstore is 800/514-2665. For those of you outside the US, their non-free number is 818/395-6161.
In my case, shipping was $6.00. Call to find out what your charges might be or to use a credit card.
(Neither book has an ISBN, so ordering via your local bookstore is not recommended and may very well be nigh-impossible.)
The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery
mirror (see the pranks link for images)
I remember meeting a kid from Cal-Tech, and to this day his impression remains with me. I have never met such a mix of intellect with insanity. He was working for the summer at Northwestern University, and I spent a couple days at his rented house (which a friend of mine from high school was renting with his girlfriend, there were 6 people living in this old house). Anyways, this guy had a pet spider, but not any spider, a black widow. And one night he wanted to cook for all of us. He boiled a big pot of water, Dropped in a head of chopped lettice, and two slices of american cheese. He then served it to us with so much pride. Later that night I broke out a huge jug of Vodka and a half gallon of OJ. We were making screwdrivers that were nearly see-through. After his first glass, he started crying about how he's never been with a woman. By his second glass, he was singing in chineese. He could not finish his third glass, he fell asleep on the floor right there. So the next morning we wake up, and I look in his fishtank, and the black widow is gone. I ask him what happened, and he said he felt bad for it and let it lose the night before. I asked where, and he said "I don't remember, maybe in your room" FUCK! I left that day, and never returned.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Don't mod either of Joe's comments up or down - he corrected his own mistake. We've all done this a bajillion times, especially in the wee hours of the morning, so let's not take it out on Joe just because we've lost karma over it in the past.
;-D
Mods: If you have to take out your anger on a comment, mod this one down instead.
Joe: You owe me one, bud.
Didn't Harvard win the game?
If there have ever ever been wedding for any of the MIT students, even more so, on the site itself...
Well, you get the idea.
know that Caltech is more hardcore. We also hear that it's more miserable.
For all those interested in more school rivalries and pranks, get a copy of:
If at All Possible, Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks
by Neil Steinberg
Very fun reading.
Yeah, Caltech did suprise our hacking community, but we were caught offguard only once. As was noted in multiple other comments, no less than 20 minutes after the Caltech kiddies unfurled their "The Other" banner over "Institute of Technology" our guys made and unfurled a "The Only" banner. The balloons weren't all that creative or elaborate, and what the Caltech vs. MIT page won't admit to is the Caltech kiddies also tried to do some silly thing Saturday night. A buncha our hackers were patrolling the roofs, found them, and told them to turn over their Caltech ID's or they were gonna call the cops. We now have a buncha Caltech ID's. Anyways, to finish off the arrogrant bragging, the way someone explained it to me when I was a prefrosh (and I agree) was this way: Caltech sees us as rivals, but we just don't care about them one way or the other.
All those pranks... again... *yawns* and again.
The wit of it all. I'm sat here amazed and astounded!
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
one time, in middle school, some people let some pigs onto the campus. They painted on the pigs "1", "2", and "4". The faculty spent weeks looking for the third one.
http://www.bash.org/?482717
that reminds me of a yale vs harvard video i saw on exbyte http://www.exbyte.net/media/videos/416/Harvard_Suc ks.html
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Could someone had an option to Slashcode to filter out any story containing the word "prefrosh"? I don't have to know what it means to know I don't like it.
fish and pipes
and a brother of the play midnight-wiffleball-with-prefrosh fraternity, I must say the balloons in lobby 7 were pretty tame. I guess they never heard about the balloon at the Harvard-Yale football game. We'll be sure to get them back, don't you all worry.
To: All Admissions Staff
From: Director of Admissions
In order to continue fundraising, we have to admit 40% legacies that are shit for brains. They can't read or write, but their fathers have us on an allowance, and we want the money. Plus, without legacies, there would be nobody there to say "You got me again, you silly nerd!". The other 60% will be merit admission, with 30% comming from India. Please be mindful that engish is their second language, and some of them might feel more at home taking baths in the Boston River. The other 30% are American Chinese students. Unlike the other 70%, they know american grammer and spelling.
But feel good, at least we are not Harvard. There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
nt
I am not affiliated with any school. When I applied for colleges in the early 90's, I did not apply to either, although I did my research. MIT has been declining the past 20 years. Cal Tech is making a name for itself.
The only news out of MIT that I have read the past 2 years is kids getting drunk and dying. The news out of Cal Tech is they are playing with lasers and doing cool stuff.
MIT is at risk of becomming obsolete. 50 years ago Berkeley was a stud school. Today it is nothing special, no better than the University of Michigan or University of Texas. Berkeley rested on their laurels, and that is what MIT is doing.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I still think the 1961 Rosebowl prank is one of the very best. But yeah, these latest MIT ones were lame.
I call shenannigans on this post.
"Better" grad schools is just a code word for elite. There are plenty of good grad schools out there, all the major corporations do not hire just from one or two schools (Want to know why? Beucase they know from experience that just beucase you came from a big name school does not make you the best person they are looking for!), they take good talent from wherever they can get it from. Similarly, even the elite universities on a pretty significant basis take students from state schools into their grad scools.
The "more depth in education" is also a load of crap, sounds like more BS to support the false perceptions that you can only get a good education at these elite schools. There is lots of good education out there for the willing. This idea that you can only go to CalTech or MIT to get a good education is just bogus, look at all the good engineers that from from places like UIUC, U Texas, Renasslyer, various UC schools, and numbers of other lesser known public and private universities.
The truth is that if you want a good education, the universities out there fight for students and usually provide a good education.
The stuff that USNWR reports is totally bogus, you can't reduce the quality of an education down to statistics. I am not exactly sure about what "ask an Asian parent" means, but it sounds like a subtly racist jab at those who do not follow the college herd mentality to get into what is perceived to be "better" colleges.
If you want to be a scientist, you need to be smart and have the initative and creativity of a scientist. There is top-notch research going on all over the country and the world. The decision where you go shouldn't be based on fallacious pre-conceptions about popular elite colleges but instead about how you can best use your skills to take you to where you want to go.
As one of the Caltech students who was at MIT this weekend, I'd just like to point out that regardless of how lame the MIT hackers may think our pranks were - and I know from talking to many of them personally that a large faction of them were actually quite impressed - I haven't seen MIT doing anything better in the past 10 years.
Why don't you ask her yourself? :-)
Because most slashdotters probably won't actually browse around the site, I think it's important to repeat some of the rules of this prank war. The intent of this is good-natured fun, which seems to be missed by some of the commenters here.
From http://www.caltechvsmit.com/overview.html:
Both Caltech and MIT require that students put in a lot of hard work studying math and science. Because the stress is so intense, we students at Caltech believe that pranks are an important, if not essential, way to relax and have a little fun. We are familiar with MIT's tradition of hacks and hope that we can merge the cultures at the two schools, if only for a short time.
We propose that MIT joins us in a pranking/hacking war. As you may have already noticed, we struck first, so now it is MIT's turn. Obviously the distance between schools poses a great difficulty, but we believe that MIT students will find that this difficulty can be overcome. In fact all of the pranks need not even be on the other school's campus so long as the pranks are made public enough through the media.
The rules of the contest are simple and are essentially the same as Caltech's prank ethics and MIT's hackers' code. Pranks should be reversible. No permanent damage should be done and the pranksters must provide some sort of contact information on a note so they can be contacted if things are damaged. The note need not contain names, but it must be a reliable way to contact the pranksters.
Pranks should be creative and display some form of originality. Novel ideas, particularly novel ideas involving technology, are generally well received, but repeats are strictly discouraged. We suggest that those wanting to participate make themselves very familiar with the history of pranks and hacks at both schools in order to prevent repeating pranks.
Finally, we wish to inform MIT students that Caltech Prefrosh Weekend is next weekend. It may not be possible to organize something so quickly, but we have faith in the ingenuity of MIT students. We hope to see you all in Pasadena soon.
As a side note, denial of service attacks are lame. Anybody can do that. Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to put a '2' on the scoreboard?
Is this indicative of the type of stories that /. is reporting now??
These pranks only seem to indicate that CalTech students have a massive inferiority complex? These pranks are lame. How hard, interesting, creative, or amazing is it to release balloons with C.I.T on them or print T-shirts? Flying thousands of miles just to do that only shows you have too much money and not enough creativity.
Sorry CIT, but you only seemed to have proven to the rest of the world how lame you are (and I didn't even go to either of these schools).
AccountKiller
A bunch of Yalies pulled a similar prank at this year's The Game, but there was no lock-picking or theft involved - just pure social engineering. They reconnoitered the Cantabs' stadium and designed their own card stunt. The day of the game, they dressed up as the "Harvard Pep Squad", and passed out their cards, without, apparently, raising an eyebrow. And not once, not twice, but three times (or more!), they got 1800 Havard students and alums to declare as one: "WE SUCK".
Caltech did it first. sorry
Okay, someone is catching on that these are two different words. That's good, but "to loose" is a perfectly cromulent word, with its own meaning. It was properly used here. If you lose something, you no longer know where it is. If you loose something, you unleash it (generally against someone or something).
To use both in a sentence: If you lose your dictionary again, I will loose my wrath upon you!
Or, to use some other tenses: Loosing her exquisite talent on me last night, she made it clear that she had long since lost her virginity.
I apologize for the belligerent tone; these pranks were, in fact, meant to be in the spirit of friendly competition. If they've actually gotten MIT people and 'Techers pissed off at each other, I apologize on behalf of the Caltech pranksters.
I'm not going to get into which is a better school, that's rather subjective when you get down to it better how) but they are worse because they pull pranks? HArdly, Caltech is known to be the king of pranks, this pales in comparies to their ultimate, the ultimate prank if you asked me.
The year was 1961, and it was the Rose Bowl, which is held in Pasadena California. Now this is also where Caltech is located. Now Caltech doesn't play in the Rose Bowl ever, they don't play 1A ball for that matter, but some students form there decided to get in anyhow.
That year, the Washington Huskies had an elobrate halftime show planned. It involved not only the band, but a set of cards that the audience would display. The way it worked was audience members sitting in the selected section had a bunch of coloured cards, and a sheet of instructions, telling them which colour to hold up on which cue. The cheerleaders then called cues, and the cards went up to form pictures.
Well a group of Caltech students, later known as the Fiendish Fourteen, decided to alter what happened. They broke in to the room where the instructions sheets were stored, took them, made alterations, made copies, ageded the copies, then replaced them. Nobody noticed that a switch had been made.
On game day the modified sheets were distributed and during halftime the show commenced. Most of the images were left largely unaltered, expect for minor changes, so no one knew what was happening. PRoblems started on the 12th image. It was supposed to be a huskie, but had been altered to look somewhat like a beaver (Caltech's mascot). The 13th image was worse, it was to spell out "HUSKIES" but Caltech reversed it to say "SEIKSUH". Seeing this, and figuring it for a fuckup, the cheerleaders quickly called for the next image, which read "CALTECH" in block letters.
The band stopped playing, the stadium went silent, and the announcers were speechless. It couldn't have been more perfect, as the cameras were focuesd on the crowd at the time (halftime shows were broadcast then) and it went out on national TV. After a few moments silecnt, laguhter broke out. The band left the field, and the final image was never called.
Now that, my friend, is a prank, and it's one of the things Caltech is known for. It's an odd university, with a somewhat different sense of humour, but that certianly doesn't make it bad. That they traveled to MIT to pull a prank is not supprising, like I said, they've done better.
FYI: If this stuff intrests you, read If At All Possible Involve a Cow by Neil Steinberg. It was there that I orignally heard of this great prank.
Can we please get a OFF-TOPIC topic that I can uncheck in my preferences ?
Thanks in advance.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Please mod this post down. This is thoroughly disrespectful, especially considering that the girl is active on this Slashdot article.
If engineers/nerds hope to attract more women to the fold, this type of behavior is not the way to do so.
There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Ahem. "Their legacies". I take it you're not part of the American Chinese 30%.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Ah, the joys of going to a lower-tier university. The official response of Tulane University students will be to give you a drunken glare, ask "What the *hiccup* fuck are you talking abou--" and then leaving midsentence to chase some sorority girl.
Actually, when I wrote it to sound degenrate, but now that I think about it: no matter what the outcome of the inevitable prank war, it looks like the joke is on both of them.
Well whoopy they made tee-shirts and put up plastic plants, Geee what next. Wearing there tee-shirts inside out. A standard teenager on a drink up does more exciting and defining pranks than this. Had they not highlighted them as `pranks` I suspect everybody would have missed em.
:(*
MIT,, Mass Ingenuity Trashed or is it Major Idiotic Tricks
Not everyone likes DD sized ones. I find she looks pretty, I wish we could see her face, which matters a lot more to me than that...
I look forward to it. When you fly into LAX have the SuperShuttle take you to Caltech Stop #1.
... that's all i wrote...
I'd do a good prank, but those pansies would probably cry or wet themselves or something, and I'd have to deal with the stench as it drifted across the causeway into our town.
(hopes some Davis students read this... ;) )
-Vendal Thornheart
They're both good schools, and it's pretty difficult to assign a ranking. Sure, they do largely compete for the same students, but most of the difference between them people use to decide isn't whether one is objectively "better" than the other, but which sort of environment they prefer. For one, they are vastly different in size, have rather different cultures (both among students and especially faculty), and quite different location (suburban LA versus urban Boston).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"The Jacks began searching for the source of our laser, which they shortly found but could not shut off without risking costly damage to MIT equipment."
Anyone know how this is so?
I didn't go to either of them, although I briefly considered both. I ended up going to a school that really does have a bit of an inferiority complex, Harvey Mudd College, although it too is so different as to be hard to compare (undergrad-only; humanities-heavy curriculum; part of a consortium with 4 other undergrad liberal arts colleges).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is news? The only people who would care about this are Sci or Eng students.
And I thought The Boat Race was bad enough.
Make you MIT/CIT bitches cry. Damn rich stuck up nerds with no life a serious superiority complex. They don't know the value of hard work.
The 5 area rankings are:
Arts & Sciences #1
Biological Sciences #5 (after Stanford, MIT, Harvard, UC San Diego)
Engineering #2 (after MIT)
Physical Sciences & Math #1
Social & Behavorial Sciences #1
Link
from: http://people.bu.edu/fmri/somers/cannon.html
I think the first cannon attempt goes back to '74 or even '72. They once got it on a pickup truck only to break the axle. Another time the fire hose was turned on them. By the mid 80's there was still a buzz about the cannon, but no serious efforts had been made for awhile. Mark Moeglein and I made a trial run as a frosh, with a pick up truck and a pair of bolt cutters, but all we did was cut the lock -- I don't know how we would have gotten it on the truck.
In '86 I was ASHMC president and had a bit of a prank reputation. ( I was nearly expelled for moving the stakes of New II/ 7th/ Case Dorm early in construction ). Jeff Hong and Steve Olson revived the idea of stealing the cannon and had made a few observational runs. They knew it was a big job and that it would take some money (hopefully ASHMC's) so they brought me in. I got some covert help from the administration -- the phone number of an alum, Bob DePietro, who had a construction engineering company -- and a promise to post bail if we got busted.
The DePietro connection was critical. We used his name to rent a flat bed truck and a fork lift in Pasadena. I don't think they would have given it to a 21 year college student with a visa card. There were so many logistics. We had to find 2 people with class 2 drivers licences to drive the truck and the fork lift off site -- Greg Felton and Tom Jed.
We also had the problem of where to park the fork lift. We planned an early Saturday morning raid. But had to pick up the forklift by 5 on Friday. The forklift was huge and clearly could make a trip on the 210 between Claremont and Pasadena. So I scouted around and found some road construction where they left the equipment over night. We picked the fork lift right at 5 and fortunately the work crew quit a little early. Tom Jed just drove it in behind the Pasadena equipment, parked it and took the key. Well, actually it wasn't that simple. Tom ran into a BMW on the way! As we would later discover, the hydrolic steering on the forklift was defective.
OK, so we had the hardware, but how we're we going to pull it off. We picked an early Saturday morning when most of Fleming House was off on a dorm ski trip. But still we needed cover. We decided to go in daylight and pose as a construction crew. Joe, after a stint in the army, was a bald 27 year-old Mudder. He was made foreman and H&M construction was born. Phony work orders were made and blue workshirts, overalls, and workmen flannels were aqcuired.
We could not think of one story that would fool everyone, so we came up with two stories. We told campus security that we had be contracted to take the barrel for polishing. There was no way would that the students have bought that lame story. So we told them we're just moving it to get access to a broken water main that was below. Still a little fishy, so we added some decoys. Tom, Steve, and Eric went in 15 minutes before to pose as Caltech students. Two playing catch and one reading. I think this was critical. Each time someone would come along, they would be suspicious. But then they looked around and saw other "techies" who seemed to think all was right so they moved along. And to add insult to injury, Byrne Sanford hid inside the dorm and shot 8 rolls of photos of the whole event.
Of course it wasn't all so smooth. Campus security was called almost immediately upon our arrival. I thought we were busted. But Joe our foreman played his role beautifully and made our story hold up. Once campus security was pacified, we knew we were going to make it. Also there was a Fleming house frosh who was up early and chatting with us. He gave us a bit of a scare, but by the end he was telling us stories of how people had tried to steal the cannon in the past. Poor frosh.
Unfortunately, the steering on the forklift was no good and we had to do it by hand -- two of us on each wheel, back and forth trying to back into a corner so we could lift the cannon. The wheels were so rotte
Even though I'm an alum (you guess from where), the following are un-biased examples of inscription hacks.
(1) recent hack by the west coast school
(2) a classic inscription hack
It's clear which of the two is more thoughtful, creative, and true to the spirit of hacking.
Why does the person wearing the T-shirt in that photo has 2 lumps on his chest?
That would be a rare example of what is known as a FE-Male. Fulminate of Estrogen infused male. Handle with caution as they can be extremely volatile, but with proper care can be quite nice to have around.
A standard teenager on a drink up does more exciting and defining pranks than this.
Real story.
Poland, students' hostel, one of major universities. 10th floor, party, lots of drinks. The students decide to send a mission to Mars. They find a volunteer, pack him in a cardboard box, write on the box "Mission to Mars" and throw him out through the window.
People on the street see the corpse in a puddle of blood, call the police, the police starts investigating, they go to the 10th floor, where the party goes on, open the door and see them packing another volunteer into another box, with "rescue mission" written on the side.
that while MIT is very prestigious, Caltech is far harder to get into. All my friends that were getting into MIT were getting rejected from Caltech. I only knew one person that did make it to caltech; and he was a science god (hacker/ math/chem/physics/cs god)
Also there's that pejorative rumor that Caltech turns you gay (not that there's anything wrong with that); you have uber-smart but on average socially lacking guys mixed together in a presssurized academic world where you find that's you arent the top dog that you always thought you were. These types of conditions are a recipe for such things. I guess that's better than a reputation that other eng schools have for having their kids kill themselves (most top engineering schools have one every 1-2 years)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what a bunch of dorks
From the bottom of the "Overview" page:
:o hacked already, or a mistake on CalTech's part?
"As a side note, denial of service attacks are lame. Anybody can do that. Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to put a '1' on the scoreboard?"
The scoreboard on the Home page:
Caltech - 6 | MIT - 1
balloons in the dome at night
e r/c.jpgr /a.jpg/ l.jpgt .jpg. jpgj pgp g
palm trees inside "Tomb of the Unkown Tool"
a full shot of someone wearing the shirt
a the only institute of technology retaliation
prank signature on white board
and the spelling of CALTECH:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/las
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/lase
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/e
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/c.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/h.j
HD Trailers
But perhaps it's stuff that matters.
Somehow.
The Internet is generally stupid
Not all engineers/nerds are guys.
Some of them are girls.
Gosh you're a sexist pig.
ETH Zürich > MIT > University of Botswana > Caltech
MIT has them, but Caltech has not.
From what (or more who) I know, it seems that ETHZ is faaaaar away in term of humor (but are less arrogant as well).
...but here it's an expectation? Well, I guess this is what you get for giving these places the "rich man's loophole" by making it a nice large (and possibly price fixed) admission fee that's conditionally waived for the undeserving. Now when some Ohio State (or even better, Wright State) students would return the favor for the Wright Flyer stunt at MIT, that'd be news, not some high-tax state that caters to the same crowd as MIT's nearby neighbors, also home to Caltech's evil neighbors.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
The person modeling the T-shirt has too many curves.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
"A full account of the pranks is located at ..." ... "has been located at" is the correct wording.
...
But even that sounds wrong since "locate" means to determine a specific area/place/etc...
I'd say
"has been stored at "
or
"has been made available through "
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The T-shirt concept has been used in the MIT-Harvard rivalry for *years*. Can't fin a picture but here's a reference.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I guess that this must be an inverse contest. Whoever wins will prove that they spend too much valuable time thinking about pranks instead of getting an education.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Nah, we can always hire someone like you to do it for $22K/yr.
Sure, by the time when the total contribution to human science created by the Eastern Timor school or the University of Argentina becomes as significant as those of MIT and Caltech, then I'm sure we will read a lot about them.
Then start your own website. FWIW, your country doesn't have a single university as good as Caltech OR MIT. And I don't even have to ask where you're from before making that determination.
"They distributed shirts with MIT on the front and '...because not everyone can go to Caltech' on the back."
What a prank! Those whacky nerds! (slaps his knee!)
Approximately 1/4 of Engineers are foreigners, so it may just be that some of the people who run your country or it's large companies went to MIT.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Don't Caltech and MIT often exchange idiotic pranks like this? Since when was this news?
And I was there from Thursday to Sunday. Not saying it didn't happen, just that it wasn't very obvious. The a capella choirs' concert (the closing event) was hacked though - a banner dropped down with some pictures of beavers & such. It read, "MIT: more dome for your dollar, more beaver for your [can't remember], more bang for your buck".
that is all
Nixon was a big football fan and decided to go see the Rosebowl game that year which meant the Secret Service had to scour the Rosebowl. As part of their checkout, they powered up the scoreboard and because Rosum had scrimped on his relays, they blew his circuit out. Debugging the blown scoreboard led them to his fried, and smoking, circuit. That would have been the end of it except some other Techies decided independently to pull the same prank. Except they didn't know the Secret Service was waiting for the first prankster to come fix his prank. Guess who ended up getting caught?
if messing with so many asian kids is considered a hate crime...
The Chronicle of Higher Ed reported on that the reported prank didn't go so well. Seems that the Harvard students moved around from their assigned seating and the cards didn't produce anything readable.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
This means WAR...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It was filmed at Occidental College, near Caltech, and at Pomona College in Claremont. But the "Pacific Tech" in the movie was obviously intended to portray Caltech, and the movie has many Caltech references.
(By the way, the frozen ice that turns directly to gas is dry ice, carbon dioxide.)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
INI
As a product of UIUC working for Cornell, and a former employee of a company that employees hundreds of MIT grads (mostly from the prestigous MIT Gas Turbine Lab). I have to say, you are almost exactly right.
I'd say the top 10% at UIUC are roughly equivilant to the top 20-30% at MIT (and the bottom 20% of UIUC engineering/physics would never get in the door at MIT). Not everyone at MIT is great, but they do have a higher rate...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
No, whoever posted the story to Slashdot is the one that is DOS-ing your site.
2) "our group bribed two kids with a stereo into playing the Ride of the Valkyries, Caltech's song"
The Valkyries were the ones who carried the dead from the battlefield (and into heaven if i'm not mistaken). If they tried that garbage at my school they had better bring their own Valkries to clean up the mess.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
wha?
What the hell is wrong with "is located at"?
"has been located at" doesn't even mean the same thing.
Unless you're making a weak slashdotting joke by your insistence at past tense, the present tense is perfectly correct, and the use of active voice far preferable to the passive voice you seem to be insisting on.
Compare the original sentence and your preferred replacement:
"A full account of the pranks is located at www.caltechvsmit.com"
"A full account of the pranks has been made available through www.caltechvsmit.com"
See how much more concise and to the point the original is?
There are no prizes for wordiness, and "through" is just wrong anyway.
A web site (note the use of the word "site") is considered to be a location (albeit a virtual one), not a service, therefore "located at" is perfectly fine.
Advanced users are users too!
Feynman came to Caltech in 1950. He published his main papers on QED and Feynman diagrams in 1947/1948, when he was still at Cornell. Many of his ideas came out of his Ph.D. work with Wheeler at Princeton, although some of the ideas go back even to his undergrad days at MIT, according to his Nobel lecture.
ETH who? Hmmm.. sounds like the wind.. nothing of consequence.
What the hell is wrong with "is located at"?
..." is actually correct.
The "is" and "located" don't match in tense. That's like saying "He is medicated yesterday."
Saying "He is medicated" is also incorrect [for the same reason].
It's "yet another english thingy that became the norm". In reality the guy put the thing up available at that address in the PAST. He's not still putting it up there...
So
"It was made available at
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
He did his undergrad at MIT. Remember? MIT populates the faculty of other schools.
This their verison of the NCAA Champsionship!
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
They confuse being Slashdotted for a DOS.
FWIW, your country doesn't have a single university as good as Caltech OR MIT. And I don't even have to ask where you're from before making that determination.
Now that's just steroetypical American arrogance rearing its ugly head again. And you wonder why the rest of the world hates you.
FYI, there are actually a lot of other countries out there as good or better than MIT or Caltech. Of course, they're found in obscure, little-known countries like India, China, Britain, and Canada, but they're out there.
Perhaps if your "super-elite, best-in-the-world" US colleges focused a little more on their geography classes instead of their patriotism classes, you'd know that.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Who takes pride in it and loves technolgy and wishes he could go to MIT. I say that MIT hacks are way much better. Though, now is the time to strike back, MIT! INVADE TEH CALTECH CAMPUS!!!!
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
At the risk of incurring the wrath of a grammer flame, a minor correction to my post:
"there are actually a lot of other countries out there with colleges as good or better than MIT or Caltech."
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Back in the 1980s I wrote a letter to Scientific American complaining about their spelling of Caltech.
...)
They wrote back and told me I was wrong -- the official abbreviation is Cal Tech. Sigh. At least as of 1980 they were right and I was wrong.
I doubt that's changed.
We all used Caltech (t-shirts, stationery, etc) -- but technically it's probably still Cal Tech.
In the 80s we did use CIT on occasion.
As to the MIT/Caltech comparisons, I think most people who know both would agree that the 'top 120 SAT scorers' in an MIT class are very comparable in personality and academic inclinations to a Caltech class (used to be about 120). MIT, however, has another pool of students that's more diverse and not as physics-focused as the Caltech students. I do think we were (still are based on the single visit I've made back there in 25 years) the geekiest student body that ever lived. (When I was a member of the Caltech Y I championed a "Nerd Pride" event. If you can't beat it
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
To help you out...[since I know you still don't understand]
"locate" is a verb. That is to find something.
Location is a noun.
"It is located" is wrong. "Its location is" is correct.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Caltech /had/ some talent... (Score:4, Interesting)
by _defiant_ (120560) on Monday April 11, @03:36AM (#12198479)
Complete rip off not of the above post but the entire article it links to.
It may be a correct sentence, but it screwed up the meaning, and the meaning is far more important that finer points of style.
>In reality the guy put the thing up available at that address in the PAST. He's not still putting it up there...
The original message says nothing about the act of putting up the page - because no one cares about that.
It tells you where you can find it _now_ - which is what we do care about.
"was made available at" tells you nothing about where you can get it now.
You could make two changes to the original sentence that would improve its style without losing the meaning.
Drop "located" -
"A full account of the pranks is at www.caltechvsmit.com"
Or change located to available as you suggested, but without screwing with the tense -
"A full account of the pranks is available at www.caltechvsmit.com"
The first is probably preferable as it's more concise.
In any case, we're talking about a slashdot submission here, it's informal speech and no one cares whether or not it meets the highest levels of style.
As long as it's clear, says what it means, and spelt right. Bad spelling is far less acceptable than not adhering to a style guide, and attempts to improve the style that sacrifice meaning do not help anyone.
Advanced users are users too!
MIT should send Caltech a girl...or maybe a picture of a social interaction. Also, it should be noted that MIT hackers promptly changed the banner "the other" to "the only."
woot woot! Way to go MIT. Very impressive.
I know this is stupid, but I'll make my comment: ............
is medicated != is located
is - present tense, which means that as of right now, as of the time of this writing
example:
The building is located at
or
the information is lacated at this web site....
as the previous writer wrote, a web site is a virtual location (remember the URL?)
It is true that the information WAS PUT up there at some point in the past, but that is irrelevant to us. We are only concerned with where the information is LOCATED, not when the information WAS UPLOADED to this specific LOCATION.
When we're referring to a person BEING MEDICATED we cannot say is medicated. So we use IS BEING MEDICATED (if the patient is still under treatment. So you arte comparing two different things.
"it was made available..." is correct, but that doesn't mean "is located at..." or you can "find it at...." is incorrect. In fact they are more correct than "it was made available...."
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
locate ... IS A VERB!!! "located" is past tense!!!
"its location is" is what "is located at" means. Just because it's common doesn't mean it's proper.
"is" is a present tense VERB... He is here. He was here, he will be here, etc.
So in summary, locate == verb, location == noun
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The University seems to look down upon pranks. Here at U of Waterloo, they look down upon pranks that are even just contained within the University.
They would take down those balloons easily.
Even better would be selling the right to shoot them down and using the money for some charity.
Even a novice should be able to hit a balloon with a scoped pellet gun.
just because it's "proper" doesn't mean it's _right_.
To the person who said that the cards weren't readable: some pictures at the prank website. Definitely legible.
yeah who neededs correct grammar when posteding. Cuz anything has fly!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is it still arrogant if it's true?
FYI, there are actually a lot of other countries out there as good or better than MIT or Caltech. Of course, they're found in obscure, little-known countries like India, China, Britain, and Canada, but they're out there.
Names? As for England, Cambridge and Oxford are very good, both in the top 10 in a lot of fields. But Britain goes down fast after that. China's rising but not there yet, same for India. Canada doesn't have that many good schools, none of their best would top our top 20. That includes, for example, UToronto. You failed to mention Germany and Japan which would likely provide the best competition to the US, actually, after Britain.
Here's a list of the top schools compiled by a Chinese university: ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500(1-100).pdf. I deliberately chose a non-American source to prevent any "bias.". Of the top 25, 18 are American. That's not the only authority, of course, but I'd love to see any measure in which well over half the world's top universities weren't in the US.
Perhaps if your "super-elite, best-in-the-world" US colleges focused a little more on their geography classes instead of their patriotism classes, you'd know that.
I'm familiar with many institutions across the world (and quite good at geography). And I've never seen one that profs in the sciences would routinely choose a job at as opposed to any of the top 5 US schools (say MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford). The only ones that would offer competition would be Oxford and Cambridge. And I'm quite familiar with this situation. Probably different in liberal arts, but not science.
You may not like it - but it IS true.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of a grammer flame, a minor correction to my post:
How about a spelling flame? "Grammer"? You mean like the guy who played Frasier?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Bah you idiot - you must be an American we are talking about here - i mean ignorant and presumptuous. That was supposed to be funny for all the other geeks. Pffft - disrespectful? How the fuck would anyone know she's "active" on the /. circle and why the fuck would i know. Oh lord - go get a life you geek.
The pranks were not as bad as they seem to have been reported. The balloons did go up under the dome, but very few people noticed them. The palm tree also went up on the dome, but it was not up there for more than a few minutes before it was retrieved and spray-painted white to appear covered in snow. The t-shirts were handed out at the Academic Fair which a fair number of prefrosh didn't even go to, and the laser on the side of the Green Building...well, let's just say I witnessed a few people departing to make that guy's life miserable. The banner reading "That Other [Institute of Technology]" was also rapidly counter-hacked to read "The Only [Institute of Technology]".
It took a while for people to realize that Caltech students really had taken the time to fly out here and bother us (the smart money was originally on Caltech alumni at the grad school). MIT may have a rivalry with Caltech, but it's quite far away and not supported by any sort of sports team encounters. Caltech may have only MIT to focus on, but MIT spends a lot of its energy harassing Harvard, which has the advantages of being easily mocked and just down the road. Caltech has had some great hacks in the past - the Rose Bowl prank, the Hollywood sign - but MIT has a greater culture of regular hacking that involves much of the community. Thus, it's a little surprising that Caltech would throw down the gauntlet like this...and the invitation to prank their prefrosh weekend can mean only trouble.
But it would probably be trouble for Caltech. They seem to have invested a lot of pride in this, but most of the prefrosh at least didn't even know it was happening. If MIT heads to Caltech and gets humiliated, Caltech might be cheering but the rest of MIT might not even know about it. I hope they know what they're getting in to.
a lot of people seem to confuse University of Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia) with Penn State.... or they do not realize it is two unrelated schools. when i hear somebody just say "Penn" i assume they mean University of Pennsylvania, but i live in Philadelphia.
while Penn State's main campus is in State College, PA... they have satellite campuses all over the place. that may help with the confusion?
You may not like it - but it IS true.
No, it's not. I'll even use your own source to prove you wrong (your link is broken, by the way). The original poster said:
your country doesn't have a single university as good as Caltech OR MIT.
Well, according to your list, the University of Cambridge (in the UK) ranks higher than both MIT and Caltech.
So the original poster was wrong, according to your own data.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Actually, if he was British you might be wrong, but Slashdot covers their hacks too, so you both have somewhat flawed arguments.
Yeah, I took a gamble poster wasn't British. I'll obviously concede Oxford and Cambridge are both great universities. Though I would contend that after that, things fall quickly.
Main point stands, though. The majority of the world's best universities, especially at the top, are in the US.
I hope that changes, honestly, and I say that as an American. Not because the world sends its best and brightest here (I actually like how multicultural that works out), but because more education is good for everybody. Europe is quickly falling behind - particularly the Continent - and India is quickly gaining. China will too, and Japan is already there.
Compare this to before WWII years ago, when Britain and Germany were dominant, America had a few good world-class schools, and India, China and Japan weren't on the map.
Dude, chill, it's also an adjective!
"Steve located Dave's VCR" -- past participle of locate
"Dave's VCR is located at Steve's cafe" -- adjective
Try using a dictionary sometime.
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll all be lucky to live through it.
Then they put it on Slashdot...
Seriously, does anyone give a shit about this?
And MIT did it to Harvard first. (#7) They weren't even original in their choice of schools.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
That's how long this poster's penis is. I read the post and guessed the size of his organ.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
was when the laser was invited at Bell Labs. That is old news.
While it is true that research University such as MIT focus more on their grad students than undergrads, there are opportunities for motivated undergrads to get involved with cutting edge research. MIT had a Undergrad Research Opportunity Program for many years. It is up to the students how much they want to take advantage of it.
You must pick the right school for your own interests and abilities. However, one would make better choices after collecting accurate facts to support the decision.
Ok, so that was a more relevent statement pre-2001. You know what I'm saying though.
Not sure if I would trust this listing. I'm Canadian and the ordering of the universities in Canada is a little odd, although I am not sure what the criteria was. The other oddity is that it is supposedly a list of the top 100 (1-100) but it only lists 99. Seems like a fairly amateur publication.
The ranking of a University is pretty objective, it all depends what you think is important.
*adds Samari711 to friends list*
Go Irish!
I always thought that the point of a prank was to be clever or to be funny, preferably both. Most of these "pranks" really are neither. They fall into the category of either "who cares?" or "I'm being a dick!". Please, Caltech, strive for humor or cleverness. This series of "pranks" seem more like the kind a petulant child would play rather than students/graduates at one of the premier technical schools in our nation.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
That's funny, when I went there for Campus Preview Weekend only three years ago it rained the first day (and I mean it poured). Another night it snowed. And it was windy and cloudy most of the time when it wasnt precipitating. I don't know what else to say, so I'll just let the facts speak for themselves.
Ooooooh... they put a big bulletin board on the wall in front of his door. How innovative!
Puleeeez. Aren't these guys supposed to be engineers?
[Link]
I can't find pictures of the Grant Hall alarm clock, but here's Grant Hall to give you some idea of the scale of the alarm clock.
And that wall built in the JDUC (John Deutsch University Centre) was a full-scale drywall wall, painted to match the surroundings, hung with posters and other things, and generally made to look exactly like the walls next to it.
This is on top of individual departments doing their own thing. The physics department (i.e. me and some buds) made the physics lounge (a little sitting room) into a real lounge. We "borrowed" all kinds of fun things from the labs upstairs, physics labs and dance clubs having so much in common: lasers, strobe lights, clouds of liquid nitrogen vapours, etc.
Other years did similar fun things, like taking apart a car and rebuilding it around a light post, or rebuilding it inside a building on a second floor balcony.
Compared to that, putting a bulletin board in front of a guy's office is rather lame.
we "downsized" our President's office which we thought was a more productive way of complaining about budget cuts and tuition increases than making it disappear entirely. While I cannot find the pictures at the moment, we basically turned his office into a shack and gave him an upside-down trash can as a chair and so on. And yes, we haven't transformed a building into a cathedral, but can you imagine getting that much stuff across country? Be realistic please.
Stop proving there are limits to my madness! ;-)
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Yes, well, Mr. "Kombat", YOUR country's space shuttles are SO much nicer than our space shuttles. And YOUR Mars rover is so much nicer than OUR Mars rover (race you for pink slips). And YOUR software companies are SO much bigger than OUR software companies. And YOUR standard of living is SO much higher than OURs. I know, I know - stereotypical arrogance (actually, I think our arrogance is greater than the aggregate stereotype). But it's just because we're BETTER than you. So get over it.
I've often thought that Harvey Mudd and University of Chicago ought to prank each other.
Come on, giving away free shirts to their prefrosh that say MIT on one side (when handed the shirts, wrapped in plastic, they looked like normal MIT shirts) and "...because not everybody can go to Caltech" (which is true) on the other! That's awesome. And clever. The shirts have been made before (we've had the same shirt made by individuals around Caltech for quite some time, and I think MIT at one point sold the opposite shirt in their store), but the execution and timing were quite clever.
Admit it. Now. For the children.
Well, if all of the smarty pants at the various Institutes of Technology have time to leave their books and pull some pranks, they should have enough time to do something a little more creative like invent a cure for cancer or make a better transistor like the folks at University of Illinois, or an operating system like a poor Finish boy, or drop out and start a software company like the richest man in the world, or just stop being snobbish dorks and go _____________ (Fill in the blank with your own obnoxious saying). And that completes the longest run-on sentence.
Don't the T-shirts that say "Wright State" (front) "Wrong School" (back) count? That's at least as clever as "not everyone can go to Caltech", and I think you can still buy them at the Universtity of Dayton bookstore...
Vuja De: That sinking feeling that this is going to happen again. Often occurs in meetings with Product Managers.
But I digress...
They did actually try interhovse with a fence around it for another year (to keep out the drunk highschoolers who were most of the troublemakers), but alas that worked about as well as the concrete wall around berlin...
Sigh, another fine tradition down the dumpers...
For the courses they offer and the professors they have it's pretty good...
But of course it's really too small a school to be competitive in that respect (e.g., theater offerings are community theater level), so you really have to go off campus to get anything decent (Pasadena City College, Occidental, etc)... Fortunatly, caltech offers credit if you are so motivated, but unforutnatly, it's hard to be that motivated in Lost Angeles...
> FWIW, your country doesn't have a single university as good as Caltech OR MIT. And I don't even have to ask where you're from before making that determination.
And you Americans wonder why the rest of the world can't stand you.
Drop the arrogance for a while. The best ranked engineering schools are not in the USA.
Many of the pranks are just to get Caltech's name out...the point of Prefrosh weekend is to help undecided prefrosh pick a school, and there are a fair amount who have a choice between MIT and Caltech. If it appears that Caltech is smart enough to prank MIT with impunity, it will convince some undecideds that Caltech really is the place with the better education, a fact that previous posters have mentioned is much more important to Caltech (~200 undergrads per class) than it is to MIT (~1000 undergrads per class).
Displayed ten stories up for all the city to see, in 1972.
--J. Random Troll (BS 1977)
The humanities are really quite good and interesting at Caltech, they're just not broad. The faculty are incredible but the classes that are offered (outside the core) will be very pointed towards what faculty are teaching that term and what they work in. For example, at one point there was one law class, on communications law. Bruce Cain, probably the star Political Science guy on the west coast, was a professor there for many years before he moved north to UC Berkeley. There are many nationally known profs in the department. One of the big projects at the moment is improving election methodology, a perfect fit.
Also, the advanced classes at Caltech are very small - less than 10 students is common.
Caltech students also have exchange privileges at the Art Center College of Design, something I wish I had followed up on.
Sports, theater, and activities may not be national level most of the time, but there were many enthusiastic participants, and always a mix of skill levels.
It used to be their home stadium.
Course, it isn't an NCAA team.
Shouldn't the two nerd schools team up and pull pranks on a jock school? All of this seems so counter-productive.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Shut the fuck up, you goddamned pedant.
/. is her homepage.
With the prank images hosted in ~gremmer it wasn't too hard to dig up likely prankster Isaac Nielsen Gremmer and his residence, with a map to his room.